from the accurate-data-is-fake-news dept

When a cop needs an excuse to search something (but can't manage to talk the citizen into consenting) there's almost always a four-legged cop waiting in the wings to give the cop permission to do what he wanted to do anyway. You will rarely hear testimony given in any court case where a K9 hasn't "alerted" to the smell of drugs. Once this "alert" is delivered, officers are free to override objections to warrantless searches under the theory that a dog's permission is all that's needed.

What's willfully ignored by law enforcement officers is the nature of the beasts they deploy: dogs like pleasing handlers and will react to unconscious cues and/or do the thing they're expected to do: "find drugs." If the dog knows it can perform an act for a reward, it will perform that act, whether or not drugs are present. Unfortunately, there's a deliberate dearth of data when it comes to drug-sniffing dog fallibility. Tracking this data would undercut the dogs' raison d'etre: to act as probable cause for warrantless searches. This lack of data makes challenging drug dog "alerts" in court almost impossible.

One organization trying to address handler bias is the Pacific Northwest Police Detection Dog Association. In the U.S., a drug-sniffing dog team — the dog and its handler — has to be periodically retested and certified, usually by one of the many regional K9 associations. Some groups have tougher testing methods than others; the PNWK9 has a method that aspires to scientific levels of impartiality.

"It's a double-blind," says Fred Helfers, the retired police K9 handler and trainer who designed the system. "No outside influence."

In Helfers' tests, nobody in the room knows where the drugs are hidden; not the handler, not even the test administrator. That's to eliminate the possibility of someone unconsciously telegraphing signals to the dog as it gets close to the target.

Why this hasn't been done before is a mystery. (I mean, it's a mystery if we pretend there aren't a million reasons law enforcement agencies prefer the status quo.) As NPR points out, a study published seven years ago showed drug dogs respond more to handler cues than to the presence of drugs. Researcher Lisa Lit's tests found dogs alerting to areas researchers indicated scents would be likely, rather than where scents were actually located. What was presented as a test of drug dogs was actually a test of the dogs' handlers. The dogs failed because their handlers failed.

Needless to say, the study was unpopular in the law enforcement community. Law enforcement K9 trainers denounced the study and refused to provide any more assistance to researchers. Lit calls this study -- one that pointed out the Clever Hans-esque performance of drug sniffing dogs -- a "career killer." This is what happens to research that doesn't conform with law enforcement's self-image.

Occasionally, the dice determine that there will be no drugs hidden at all — sometimes for several tests in a row. He recalls that happening at another certification event.

"There were some new teams that failed that sequence," Helfers says. "Because they didn't trust their dog."

He says those handlers couldn't get past their expectation that drugs should be there. "I think they 'overworked' the car. Instead of going around once or twice and trusting their dog and watching their dog work, maybe they'd seen something that wasn't there," Helfers says.

This shows there's no question drug dogs respond to handlers. If dogs fail to respond, the animals are treated as untrustworthy by the same officers who refer to them as "probable cause on four legs." This is part of the problematic law enforcement mindset. A cop would never stop anyone who isn't a criminal… at least according to cops. This likely isn't a conscious thought, but rather the expected outcome of years of instruction that lead officers to view a wide swath of innocent behavior as inherently suspicious. (See also: too nervous, too calm, moving too much, moving too little, not looking directly at officers, looking directly at officers, traveling on any major highway, driving too fast/too slow/too perfect, ad nauseum.)

There is no room in this mindset for the possibility that the person being questioned isn't a criminal. If a cop can't find anything, it's time for a drug dog to do a few laps around the person's car, luggage, etc. If there's still no "hit," the problem must be the dog rather than the lack of contraband. Why? Because the only reason a cop would be interested in this particular person is because this person is doing something illegal. All other possibilities are discarded. This is clearly and disturbingly illustrated by this statement from another K9 officer:

"There's been cars that my dog's hit on... and just because there wasn't a product in it, doesn't mean the dog can't smell it," says Gunnar Fulmer, a K9 officer with the Walla Walla Police Department. "[The drug odor] gets permeated in clothing, it gets permeated in the headliners in cars."

[...]

"The dogs are mainly used to confirm what we already suspect," says Fulmer. "When the dogs come out, about 99 percent of the time we get an alert. And it's because we already know what's in the car; we just need that confirmation to help us out with that."

Confirmation bias, plain as day, and yet Officer Fulmar seems completely unaware of the underlying thrust of his statement. Worse, officers like Fulmer remains opposed to tracking of K9 false hits or to the introduction of any form of scientific rigor to the process.

Handlers also point out that scientific neutrality is not something you can reasonably expect during traffic stops, since police are trained to act on their suspicions.

In short, officers want to have free rein to allow their hunches to develop into warrantless searches with the assistance of animals prone to responding to handlers' cues, rather than the existence of contraband. Better an innocent man have his vehicle tossed than an officer admit his K9 partner might be more interested in giving him what he wants (a warrantless search) than in detecting the presence (or non-presence) of drugs.

This mindset permeates the entire process. When testing methods eliminate officers' involuntary cues or point out how frequently dogs respond to their handlers, it's the process that's wrong. Or the dogs. But never, under any circumstances, are the officers wrong. Law enforcement is willingly operating in its own massive blind spot, unable to fathom the slim possibility that the person they thought had drugs on them might not actually possess any drugs.

And this doesn't even address the bottom feeders of law enforcement: officers who knowingly use K9s to skirt warrant requirements, telling citizens the dog "alerted" even when it hasn't or has only done so in response to the officer's prompts. All of this is excused when officers actually find drugs and the times they don't are waved away with tired Drug War cliches about the sacrifice of a few people's rights for the greater good.

What this testing method shows is dogs (and their handlers) aren't to be trusted -- not without more data. If law enforcement can't admit to being wrong, they'll never look for ways to improve. Given what's been shown, drug dogs should not be treated as "probable cause on four legs." At best, they're walking confirmation bias -- self-serving tools of civil liberties circumvention.

Reader Comments

When confronting witnesses Whoof is OK

U.S. Constitution - Amendment 6

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

There should be a test in each and every court case where a drug dog is a part of the probable cause where the dog in question is, without the presence of their normal handler, given the opportunity to sniff a variety of objects, some of which are negligible, and other which contain samples of the same 'evidence' the accused is charged with. Samples set up by some non-partisan law enforcement obscured third party.

This might be the best way to verify the dogs are acting without 'handler bias', and at the same time give the accused an opportunity to 'confront' their accuser.

Less than that is a Sixth Amendment violation and the 'perpetrator' goes free. Full Stop.

Re: When confronting witnesses Whoof is OK

I don't know about testing for each individual case, especially since sometimes the dogs are just used for civil forfeiture and/or keeping someone in jail overnight while they go over their stuff in intimate detail. Those cases never get to court.

But they certainly should be tested and recertified at least as often as radar guns.

Another irony of this story: The ex-cop who's running this certification is clearly trying to improve the quality of drug dog searches.

"There were some new teams that failed that sequence,"
Helfers says. "Because they didn't trust their dog."

He says those handlers couldn't get past their expectation
that drugs should be there. "I think they 'overworked' the
car. Instead of going around once or twice and trusting
their dog and watching their dog work, maybe they'd seen
something that wasn't there," Helfers says.

Helfers seems to be attributing stupidity to something that is better explained by confirmation bias or prejudice (in the broadest sense of making judgments based on untested assumptions/hunches), but then he's already having trouble finding customers.

The other trouble with this (or any) certification is that even if handlers are able to pass the test by letting their dog do the searching, that doesn't prevent them from triggering the dog to give the desired results during real stops. There may be some hope that rigorous certification will help prevent carelessness in the decent K9 cops that subconsciously give clues to their dogs, but certification is no remedy for bad cops who want to use their dogs as "probable cause on four legs" and are clever enough to game the system.

Re: Re: When confronting witnesses Whoof is OK

I was planning to say the following, but Bruce C. said it first:

>The other trouble with this (or any) certification is that even if handlers are able to pass the test by letting their dog do the searching, that doesn't prevent them from triggering the dog to give the desired results during real stops. There may be some hope that rigorous certification will help prevent carelessness in the decent K9 cops that subconsciously give clues to their dogs, but certification is no remedy for bad cops who want to use their dogs as "probable cause on four legs" and are clever enough to game the system.

So, i guess we can apply the same presumption to law enforcement?the smell of corruption get embedded in the fabric of the uniforms, worked into the metal of the badge. So if we haven't found the corruption/misconduct of the officer now, it's just because it may not be during a specific incident, but it's been there during other ones.

No? You mean police officers shouldn't be held to the same standards as other people? They should be held to a far LOWER standard? We need to give them powers with no responsibility, no accountability and not even a questioning look (definitely not a questioning look, because I believe that constitutes "resisting arrest")

After all, cops just want to 'make it home at night', doesn't matter how many people they stop from going home that night, no matter the reason, only #blueLivesMatter.

Yeah - that.

You mean police officers shouldn't be held to the same standards as other people?

Exactly that. They should not be held to the same standard as others. They should be held to a higher standard.

I'll tell you why: When I go visit family by my self, I don't get pulled over. Yet every single time I go with my brother-in-law (who is African American, has 2 PhDs, and over two dozen good patents to his name) we get pulled over going into "rich" neighborhood my other sister lives in. And 3 times out of 4, they pull the K-9 thing and they search the car. Twice they've impounded the car and removed parts "searching" for drugs.

Re: Yeah - that.

Cops are violent sociopaths employed to protect and enrich the rich

There are no surprises here cops are trained sociopaths trained to be sociopaths, these are people that would lie to you or kill you as soon as look at you and would often prefer to do that instead of look at you, there is no surprise that they are incapable of taking responsibility for anything

Poor dogs

Handlers also point out that scientific neutrality is not something you can reasonably expect during traffic stops, since police are trained to act on their suspicions.

Uh, what point does the dog even serve then? It does not seem like the handlers view it as a sensor and source of information but rather as a focusing point and meter for the officers' preexisting suspicion.

It looks like the officers would be better and at least equally scientifically validly served with dowsing rods, and they are quite cheaper to care for.

Re: Resist

You start to see why MyNameHere has such a hard-on for law and copyright enforcement. They can't bear the idea that they might be wrong or erroneous and will throw the biggest fucking tantrums to ignore evidence indicating so, and to get everyone else to agree with them. Such petulance also explains MyNameHere's behavior, at that.

This is the part I do not understand - why do they need to search anything?

Is it for the potential proceeds? Are there quotas?Is it an overbearing need for authority over others?

Ok, so you pull over this guy who looks like a vagrant in a beatermobile - he must have drugs - right? - Wrong - That is not how it is supposed to work, that is not what we are telling our children, that is not what the laws say.wtf?

'A cop's intuition is never wrong. EVER.'

"The dogs are mainly used to confirm what we already suspect," says Fulmer. "When the dogs come out, about 99 percent of the time we get an alert. And it's because we already know what's in the car; we just need that confirmation to help us out with that."

Well in that case the dog 'alerting' should have no more legal weight than what a cop thinks is the case, and if believing that there might be drugs isn't sufficient grounds to perform an invasive search, then a dog alerting shouldn't be either.

If a cop's suspicion that there might be drugs would not be enough to allow a search, and they aren't willing to take 'no' for an answer when it comes to dogs and are simply using them to justify something they'd already decided on then the dog's actions should have no legal weight. If the difference between 'legal search' and 'illegal search' is as slim as 'a dog indicated that they smelled something' then demanding that the false positive rate be as minuscule as possible is not an unreasonable position.

The mindset on display here is basically the $2 drug test all over again. They don't care about accuracy, they just want something that vindicates what they already believe and provides legal justification for what they've already decided to do, and if the source of that vindication/justification is shown to be flawed then that's just too bad for the non-cops.

The root of the problem.

Bias mucg

Overlooking the author's snobby overgeneralization of all police, methods that produce accurate results are better for everyone, including the officers. Approaching from the perspective of protecting officers from false accusations would likely result in a better selling point to get them to support it.

Maybe they need to meet a quote

I wonder if the officers who call in the K-9 unit are trying to meet some kind of monthly arrest goal.Sure, the department may not have a written goal, but maybe officers compete with each other to see how many arrests they can make.

It goes something like this:"Gee, John, you got traffic duty this month. Your arrest rate is going to suck.""No it's not- I'll just call the K-9 unit in, have it 'alert' on drugs, and arrest the driver. (It's not my problem if there's no drugs or no charges are pressed- I just got another arrest this month.)"